


The Ethics and Erotic Particulars of Interracial May-December Student/Administrator Gay Romance

by lonelywalker



Series: A Real and Powerful Thing [2]
Category: The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
Genre: AU, Age Difference, Canon Gay Relationship, Character of Color, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:16:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began with a phone call...</p><p>Spoilers for the entire novel. AU in the sense that one major event from the end of the novel happened differently. Title from a talk given by Mr. Harbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ethics and Erotic Particulars of Interracial May-December Student/Administrator Gay Romance

“O? Phone call for you, kiddo.”

Owen raised his head from the depths of his Kierkegaard, which he was reading on his bed in the midst of bags half-packed with clothes and books for college. Most of his friends would call his cell, not the house, and in any case the weather in San Jose made it too hot to go anywhere without aircon. “Who is it?”

His mother’s sigh at once more being his secretary could be heard from down the hall. “Someone from Westish. Guert Affenlight?”

A pause. Owen’s socked feet hit the floor.

“Didn’t he write that sperm book?” she asked, handing him the receiver.

“ _That sperm book_?” Owen began, indignant, but managed to cut himself off before he launched into a detailed explanation of why Genevieve was so utterly incorrect and the caller gave up on ever being answered. “And that’s not how you say his name.” He thumbed the hold button. “Hello? President Affenlight?”

“Hello Owen. I must say it’s a pleasure to finally speak to you after reading the work you submitted to the award committee.” Owen had seen a couple of news interviews with Affenlight on YouTube, and now he sounded much the same: warm, sociable, effortlessly charming. 

“Oh, you read those papers?”

“I did. I was very impressed, and I’m sure you’ll do wonderfully here come the fall semester. Actually I’m calling to ask for a favor.”

Owen leaned back against the wall, mind racing. “A favor?”

“Well, I see on your application you played some baseball in high school. The truth is the Harpooners have always been praised for their efforts rather than actually winning anything, but that might be changing this year. We’ve recently accepted a young man with considerable talents, in his studies as well as sports, of course. The problem is he’s from South Dakota.”

“That _is_ a problem.”

Affenlight laughed. “Well, as a farmboy myself I can hardly comment. The fact is that all our dorm accommodation is already allocated, and obviously he can’t quite commute. So we were wondering if you might be persuaded to forgo one of the privileges that come with the Maria Westish Award, that is of course the private room, and take on a roommate.”

Owen’s brow furrowed. He didn’t exactly want to say yes – he’d been dreaming of the peace and quiet of having his own room which, in terms of being at college and very far from San Jose, meant practically having his own house. On the other hand, how could he say no?

“I know you must have been looking forward to having your own room, but honestly the experience is often very alienating,” Affenlight continued. “In a week your roommate is practically family, in the oldest traditions of male bonding. You might be glad to have a shoulder to lean on, someone you know from the very first day. It also adds some much-needed diversity to your college experience… I believe the young man in question is thinking of majoring in physics.”

 _Male bonding?_ Owen wondered if Affenlight could possibly know he was gay. Had he mentioned it in one of his papers? And even if Affenlight did know, was some big baseball jock really going to want to live with him? Owen had dealt with plenty of dumb athletes in high school, but that didn’t mean he would leap at the chance to spend yet another year rolling his eyes at insults. But surely he could ask for a different roommate if that sort of situation arose?

“And of course we’d be willing to compensate you,” Affenlight added.

“Compensate?”

“Well, the Maria Westish Award is designed to support the very finest students, so we’ll continue to do just that. We’ll have a computer installed in your room, and there’ll be a book allowance.”

“Book allowance?” If Affenlight had any pre-existing ideas about his articulacy, they were doubtless being rapidly quashed.

“I’ll have the housing office email you the precise figures, but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s quite reasonable.”

“Oh. Sure.” Owen wished he had a glass of cold water to throw in his own face. “Thank you. By the way, I very much enjoyed your book. _The Sperm-Squeezers_? It made quite an impression on me.”

He could tell Affenlight was smiling. “Oh, good. I doubt there are many freshpersons with it in their library. Well, as I said, expect an email from us shortly and we’ll hammer out the details. And I’ll see you and Henry at convocation next week.”

 _Henry?_ “Um, yes. Great! Thank you for calling.”

Owen replaced the receiver. He was unsure what, precisely, he had just agreed to, or what consequences it might have for his academic career, but his heart was thrumming in his chest like he’d just hit a home run.

He went to go and stare at his Gmail.

***

Almost three years later, in the middle of April, Owen walked into Scull Hall and knocked lightly on the door to Guert Affenlight's office. He loved the smell of this place – not quite the aged paper of the library, but all the scents of genuinely old wood, every surface (or at least _most_ surfaces) reassuringly natural, oak and leather beneath his fingertips. Jason had mentioned once that, far from making him feel young, it made him feel "fleeting, as if I'll be gone soon, my entire generation will be gone soon, and everything here will just endure". 

But some things, at least, changed at Westish. The imposing Melville statue was only forty years old or so. Guert had only been president for eight. And Owen had only been sleeping with the president for – he checked his watch – about twenty-three hours.

"Hi," Guert said as he opened the door.

Owen smiled and slipped inside, locking the door behind him before pressing a light kiss to Guert's lips. Guert himself smelled predominantly of smoke and apples. "How's your head?" he asked as Owen ducked out from under the strap of his bag and headed, as he always did, for the love seat. 

"Mm, throbbing." He pulled out a copy of _Uncle Vanya_ he'd found in the library, the spine cracked and cracked again, pages a palimpsest of old student notes. "How's business?"

Guert pulled up a chair. "Not bad. These budgets go through so many revisions, so many debates... By the time it's actually approved I have to start on the next one." His eyes met Owen's. "Today's been more or less a write-off. I haven't been able to think of anything but you all day."

Owen reached out and tugged at the crease of Guert's slacks by his knee. "Sit over here. I don't need to lie down."

"You're sure? Your head…"

"Won't hurt so much if you don't mention it."

After yesterday's nerves, Guert seemed much calmer and certainly much less nauseated as he moved over to sit by Owen, taking the book. "From the beginning," Owen said, resting his head against Guert's shoulder.

If he liked hearing Guert read, it was evident that Guert enjoyed reading to him even more. In between convocation and commencement addresses, the president of Westish had precious few captive audiences. Owen closed his eyes and just let Guert talk, feeling the warmth of his body through his deep blue shirt, today open at the neck, tie discarded somewhere. 

Perhaps twenty minutes passed before Owen quietly said, "Okay," and kissed him.

Kissing must have been reasonably safe territory for Guert. Even yesterday, when he’d seemed reluctant just to put down Owen’s badly-xeroxed course material, he’d been enthusiastic enough once they started. Kissing was kissing, and it wasn’t as if Owen had a Melville-esque beard, or even Jason’s frequent two-day stubble. This time, though, it was Guert who laid a hand on Owen’s thigh, rubbed his palm over the bulge that was beginning to form. Did he feel as though he had something to prove?

“You don’t have to,” Owen said softly.

“I want to.” Guert’s eyes were beautiful up this close. “It wasn’t you, yesterday. I was… I was nervous and I don’t deal very well with… I mean, that’s why I felt bad. Not because of you. You’re wonderful. And I… I really want to.”

Owen’s mind was suddenly blank. “Uh… well.”

If that was all the eloquence two of Westish’s finest minds could come up with, doubtless Maria Westish was rolling in her grave.

This time around, at least, they both seemed to be a little more relaxed about the entire thing – Guert was no longer giving his first ever blow job to someone he was clearly desperate to impress, and Owen was no longer struck dumb by the very _idea_ of Guert Affenlight, whose book he’d owned since he was fourteen, even thinking about sucking him off.

Instead it was just Guert… Even though Guert was still just as strikingly handsome and dauntingly intelligent as the other guy, he was a little more approachable and a whole lot more real, Owen’s fingers sliding through his hair, feeling him breathe. “Guert…” Yesterday he’d kept his mouth shut as much as he could, but now he really, really wanted Guert to know how much he was enjoying it, and these old walls were thick, right? There was always so much noise in the quad anyway. How would anyone hear anything?

In the end, though, he really didn’t have the breath for anything but a gasp, his eyes wide, his fingers curled tight with a fistful of Guert’s hair.

“You stayed up all night reading about this, didn’t you?” he said with a languid smile as Guert stood up, dusting off his knees. 

Guert laughed and sat back down next to him. “It’s the academic way.”

Owen nudged up alongside Guert, working loose Guert’s fly as he probed the inside of his own mouth with his tongue. His jaw was still badly bruised and swollen. Much as he wanted to, it just wasn’t possible to repay the favor in kind… at least not yet. 

“You don’t have to…” Guert said. 

“Of course I don’t have to.” Owen took his time just feeling Guert, the size and heat of him, the way he readily thickened in Owen’s hand, the way Guert’s breath caught on every other stroke… “Unless you don’t want me to?”

Guert turned to look at him as if he might possibly be quite insane. 

It took less time than he expected to get Guert to come. He’d done a little research himself, which was only appropriate given the number of odd and unexpected questions the other members of the campus LGBTQQ group would email him on a daily basis. But less time still wasn’t exactly quick, which was nice because kissing Guert was very pleasant indeed, and particularly kissing him when he was breathless and aroused and needing to come so very badly.

Afterward Owen made coffee again and Guert shared his cigarette, and they kissed some more. “Will I see you tomorrow?” Guert asked when it was truly getting late and Owen would have to sprint to get his daily serving of steamed vegetables and rice in the dining hall. 

“Well, sure.” Owen tucked his _Uncle Vanya_ back into his bag. “Act Two.”

***

It was the first motel Owen had ever visited with anyone other than the entire Harpooners team, and it was more or less what he expected. At least it wasn’t much like the Bates Motel. The guy at the front desk, watching MLB games and emptying out a six-pack of Coke, certainly wasn’t even a middle-aged version of Anthony Perkins. Owen drummed his fingers on the hood of the car and waited for Guert to return with a room key.

They were about fifty miles from Westish, but that didn’t mean no one would notice them. Could people take him for Guert’s son? Well, anything was possible. In reality his father was far paler than Guert who, with his dark hair and not-quite-blue eyes, could more easily pass for Hispanic or Native American than most blond, Germanic Wisconsinites.

“That room over there,” Guert said, and tossed him the key. “There’s cable. I’ll be back in a second.”

The room was more or less what he expected too. He switched on the television and bounced experimentally on the bed. Nothing too exceptional. Nothing that would actively prevent anyone from sleeping. The TV was tuned to the baseball. He flipped channels until Guert returned, locking the door and closing the blinds as if they were particularly obvious spies.

“Pella is actually going to kill me,” he said with his usual fatalistic cheer, emptying the pockets of his overcoat of the various things he’d no doubt procured from vending machines – two cans of Coke, some dubiously-flavored potato chips, Snickers bars… “She’ll rend me limb from limb, and I’ll deserve it too.”

“Well this is disgusting,” Owen said with a grin, poking at the chips. “Where’s the thermostat?”

Guert looked around, burying his hands in his pockets. “You seriously want to turn the heat off.”

“I seriously do.” Owen found it on the wall, turned the temperature dial way down. “It’s entirely wasteful when we’re asleep, and with the amount of body heat we generate it’s completely unnecessary. Also, humans fall asleep faster in lower temperatures.”

“Yes, that must be the hypothermia setting in.” Guert eyed Owen’s backpack. “You didn’t bring pajamas in there, did you?”

“Not at all. Get undressed. I’m going to brush my teeth.”

It took until he was finished brushing and flossing, his clothes in a neat pile, for it to occur to him that he had never really seen Guert naked. Scratch the _really_. He had never seen Guert naked. Then again, Guert had never seen him naked either, which was possibly a little out of the ordinary given the circumstances.

The television was switched onto a fairly grainy TCM, and Guert was pulling off his white undershirt.

Owen stared.

Bodies were notoriously difficult things to classify. What was a good body, what was a bad one? He’d done a reasonable amount of staring in the gym debating this question while Mike tried to persuade him that he really wanted to guzzle down whey protein twice a day. Adam Starblind’s immaculately chiseled physique was impressive, but smacked of far too much vanity… and of course belonged to Adam Starblind, which was a penalty point in itself. Mike was big and hairy, with probably as much fat as muscle, but it was a body that had made him captain of two teams, that made him hit unbelievably hard and far. Henry was lean and flexible and getting tougher by the day. It wasn’t so much what the body looked like, but whether it was up to the task. 

And here, now, it was mostly about what Owen was attracted to. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t been completely distracted.

“You have a tattoo,” he said finally, and laughed, and kept on laughing.

Guert popped open one of the Coke cans and sat on the edge of the bed, letting Owen examine his arm while the heat ebbed out of the room. 

“I can’t say I’ll ever indulge myself, but I have to admit a certain fascination for body art. What things mean to people, and of course often what people do on the spur of the moment…” Owen tilted his head. “Doesn’t Pella have one like this?”

“Exactly like this,” Guert said, his tone telling of a long story.

“Family cult initiation?” The cult of Melville, apparently.

Guert passed him the Coke. “She was fourteen. I said she couldn’t get a tattoo. So she took mine, in a manner of speaking.”

“And you got yours…?” He didn’t normally drink soda and he'd just brushed his teeth, but the salads had been particularly insubstantial.

“I was twenty-one. I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life, and I wanted to stay that way.”

“Did you?”

Guert shrugged, and then shivered. “It’s freezing, O. How about some of that body heat you were talking about?”

Kissing while horizontal and in bed was quite another thing entirely, it seemed, and Owen knew after ten seconds of having Guert’s body pressed to his that they could never go back to sly blow jobs on couches. Exactly how they were going to manage it was beyond him at present – Guert had his daughter living with him, and Henry probably wouldn’t be too pleased to have Guert stay over – but he had every confidence they would figure it out.

He wasn’t sure he was going to figure out how to ask what he really wanted to ask, though, not even with Guert’s hands smoothing over his body, Guert quite obviously getting hard when Owen touched him and kept on touching. With Jason he’d never had to ask. Jason would send him porn links with ideas. If Guert had ever looked at gay porn it had probably been with an expression of extreme bafflement.

“Guert?”

“Mm hm?” 

How much beer had Guert had, exactly? Owen had been too busy frowning over iceberg lettuce leaves to notice. Not enough to have performance issues. Maybe enough not to be paralyzed with fear. 

“I want you to fuck me.”

Guert pulled back a couple of inches, his expression conveying precisely the confusion Owen had imagined. “You don’t normally curse,” he said, as if that were relevant, and perhaps it was. “And I’m not sure… I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I won’t let you hurt me.”

“Okay,” Guert said, which Owen thought was remarkably relaxed of him, and sat up. “I’m going to smoke another cigarette, and you’re going to tell me exactly how we do this. Just pretend I’ve recently landed from the planet of the straight people.”

Owen scratched his jaw, which was mostly now healed but for some remaining bruises that just made it look like he’d been punched with a fist rather than a baseball. “Honestly, you’ve never… with a girlfriend?”

Guert took his Parliaments and lighter from the dresser. “Complete virgin in this area, I’m afraid.”

Owen rested his head on Guert’s thigh, idly stroking him. “While we’re on the subject, do you think you’d be interested in letting me fuck you in the future?”

Guert smiled and took a drag on his cigarette. “I think I’d let you do whatever you want to me. Except maybe calling this fucking. Why don’t we try and make love instead?”

It fell somewhere between unbelievable neediness and the most romantic thing Owen had ever heard. He nodded. “Okay. But it’s just semantics.”

Guert passed him the cigarette. “I know. But semantics are kind of my thing.”

***

Owen woke up to the sounds of the Westish Chapel bells tolling seven. The ceiling looked particularly unfamiliar, and his bed was about twice the size it should be. He sat up and cast a hand out to find his glasses. 

Slowly, last night came back to him even as his body was still weary and aching from all the back-to-back games they’d been playing recently. This was the Westish presidential bedroom. He should probably be honored. Instead he was suffering from a real and problematic lack of pants.

“Guert?”

The team had returned late from Chute, and Owen had come here instead of heading back to his room. Pella was apparently spending the night elsewhere and, in any case, already knew about the two of them without giving any indication she was going to out them to the trustees. Making love in Guert’s bed had seemed reassuringly normal, as though they were simply participating in an activity carried out nightly by couples everywhere, no matter their ages, races, or occupations. 

The door opened a foot or so and Guert’s head appeared. “I’m making breakfast. Why don’t you throw some clothes on?”

“I don’t appear to have any.”

“Oh.” Possibly his jeans were still by the couch, where they’d spent a judicious amount of time making out the previous evening. “Take one of my t-shirts. I’ll find your pants.”

Owen found an entire drawer of plain white Ts and pulled one on – a little baggy on him, but not oddly so. After a moment’s thought he decided to borrow some underwear too. It was clean, after all. When he emerged from the bedroom, his jeans were neatly folded over the arm of the couch, with his shoes and socks below. Guert was making coffee.

“There’s scrambled egg on the stove,” he called from the kitchen. “You eat eggs, don’t you?”

“For the moment.” Owen pulled on his jeans and walked barefoot to examine the food: eggs with tomato, mushroom, and something that might have been spinach. “The last time I was here you only had coffee beans in your fridge.”

“Pella went shopping. Normally I don’t eat breakfast, but I thought you’d be hungry. Coffee?” 

“Sure.”

Owen scooped liberal amounts of eggs onto plates for each of them and set them in the nook, sitting down. “Pella doesn’t have breakfast with you?”

“She’s kind of mad at me at the moment,” Guert said, bringing over the coffee and sitting down, knotting his tie. “She’s living with some girls in town, apparently. Trial separation period.”

“Oh.” The eggs were good. The company was better. “Because of me?”

“Because of me.” Guert pushed his plate away and leaned back, drinking his espresso. “She needs me to be stable and dependable, and being with you seems like neither. I suppose I should’ve been considerate enough to have my crisis of sexual identity during the four years she wasn’t interested in seeing me at all.” He sipped the coffee, sighed. “But I’m being unfair. It’s my job to be dependable.”

“Ergo the house.”

Guert smiled slightly. “Am I that transparent?”

“A little transparency appeals on occasion. And being with a man doesn’t suddenly transform you into a reckless, unstable member of the public.”

“No, but I could have told her myself.” Guert leaned forward on the table, hanging his head. “It’s not easy to justify one’s romances. God knows she’s brought home some oddballs over the years.”

Owen pushed back his chair and stood up, going to work on the muscles of Guert’s neck as if he were just another player on the team. “I’m not sure I can speak as an expert, Guert, I’ve never met a boyfriend’s family before. But my mother’s had her share of relationships.”

“Not with men younger than you.”

“Some of them came close.” He reached around to loosen Guert’s tie, rubbing his shoulders. “I’m beginning to understand why you were so tense last night.”

“Sorry.” Guert looked over his shoulder. “I’m not used to having someone to share things with. Having you and Pella around is more socializing than I’ve done in years. But I did enjoy it. Last night, I mean.”

Owen leaned in to kiss him. “Me too. It was nice. You’re not sore?”

“No, not really.”

“Okay.” His eggs were getting cold by the time he got back to them, but he was glad for something to do that wasn’t discussing Guert’s family problems. It wasn’t that he didn’t have empathy, or an opinion, but… Was he even _allowed_ to have an opinion on these things? “I should be getting back. I want to check on Henry.” But even that seemed like swapping one potential crisis for another. How he was even supposed to study for finals in between baseball games was quite the mystery. He’d have to start reading textbooks on the bench.

As he washed up, Guert was still sitting, cradling his cup, gazing intently at the remaining coffee grounds. Owen patted him on the shoulder. “Buy the house. You’ll feel better.”

“Quite the expensive pick-me-up.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

Guert walked him down once he had his shoes on, yesterday’s clothes stuffed in his backpack on top of his baseball uniform. They kissed with Owen’s back flush against the door. “I’ll call you,” Owen said, and smiled, and left.

***

He was up and running before his brain really had time to process Mike’s words, or what he intended to do. His bat hit the floor of the dugout, and he heard that ringing echo of aluminum clattering against the concrete clearer than anything Mike or Henry shouted after him. He just grabbed his jacket from its peg and ran.

He was sure he must have cogently persuaded the clerk at the airline check-in desk to switch his ticket to the very next flight departing to Milwaukee, so that by the time Henry batted and the Harpooners won and Henry collapsed and Owen’s mother finally realized her son wasn’t there, he was already in the air and beyond her frantic calls. Really, though, he didn’t have a clear thought until, sitting scrunched up in economy between a sleeping businessman and a young mother, she asked him if he needed a tissue. He excused himself to go to the bathroom, where he stared at his tear-streaked face and his baseball uniform, and fervently wished he believed in some sort of god just so he could pray to them.

Guert was some sort of lapsed Catholic, wasn’t he?

Owen found a bus going toward Westish and sat there checking his text and voicemail messages: his mother, Mike explaining that they’d won, his mother twice more, Mike telling him to call his mother… Owen would have called back if he had any idea what to say. Mike must have told her something. Must’ve said that President Affenlight was in the hospital, which was really only half an explanation. But Genevieve was smart and she knew her son. She’d figure it out.

From the bus station was a cab ride to the hospital: an eternity of travel just to finally find Guert’s room, to burst in on Pella while still in his uniform, uncharacteristically out of breath and soaked in sweat.

“Guert?” he said to the unconscious man, and Pella slapped him.

They got along a little better after that, after Pella finished screaming at him for breaking Guert’s heart, noticed the tears on his face, and shoved a half-empty box of Kleenex against his chest. He supposed that if Mike had got there first, she’d have done much the same to him. 

As the hours stretched on, Pella went back to the college and returned with fast food together with clothes for Owen pilfered from Guert’s own drawers. Guert was a little taller and quite a lot broader in the shoulders, but Owen was grateful to get out of his Harpooners gear. He sat by the bed and munched French fries (Pella had forgotten, or never known, that he didn’t eat meat), and finally remembered that the hospital had a tiny bookstore. Ten dollars to a friendly orderly later, and he had a paperback edition of _Moby-Dick_ , because he needed to pass the time somehow and if Guert had any perception of the world surely it would be reassuring to hear something familiar.

When the rest of the team returned, some of them leaving messages on Owen’s phone that hinted at the rumors that must already have been wildfire around the campus, Genevieve came with them. She had the good grace not to do any shouting around Guert or Pella.

Owen, usually eloquence defined even where his mother was concerned, had very few answers to anything beyond “I don’t know” and “Guert needs me”, neither of which satisfied Genevieve in the least. She would have been happier reporting Guert to the police for child molestation, but for the fact that Owen was twenty-one, a consenting adult, and not even Guert’s student if it came to that. She didn’t mention reporting it to the college authorities. She didn’t have to.

When Owen finally made it back to the hospital room, two college officials he couldn’t name were just leaving. They glanced at him with more recognition than he would have expected. Pella was wiping her eyes again.

“Can you believe they asked if my dad could’ve tried to _kill_ himself?” She stopped. She looked at him. “Oh,” she said, and sat down on Owen’s copy of _Moby-Dick_.

They’d been stupid, Owen realized, going through it all with Pella. In his mind his relationship with Guert, from first glances across a room to a moonlight kiss and then finally making love, had been framed as an innocent romance. He’d just wanted to hold Guert’s hand. Sleep through the night with him in the same bed. All the little things that had meant nothing to Jason, meant nothing to Pella probably, but had meant the world to him. Guert had given him that world, and been cast out of Eden for his sins.

“I didn’t say anything,” Pella said quickly. Too quickly, because she bit her thumb. “Except to Henry. And Mike. But…”

“They wouldn’t say anything,” Owen said, unworried. Of course he’d known that Mike had known. Why else tell him and him alone that Guert was in the hospital? “Someone must’ve seen us. It doesn’t matter now. Guert just has to get better.”

Pella didn’t say a word after that, but they both knew the stakes Owen had deliberately avoided discussing. If the trustees knew about Guert sleeping with a student, Guert’s career was over, not just at Westish but possibly at any academic institution, as though he was some sort of pedophile. Even if they hadn’t known, Owen’s presence here now, the whispers of the team, what Genevieve would likely say… Owen hadn’t read the college honor code recently, but he was reasonably sure that even a _friendship_ between a student and administrator was forbidden. What eyebrows wouldn’t be raised by him flying home early, sitting here for hours, crying over the college president?

Either way you looked at it, Guert was losing his home and it was all his fault.

Owen sat down heavily in the other chair, his head hurting as badly as it had when he’d at least had the excuse of a concussion and a shattered cheekbone. “Any change?” he asked, because any conversation at all was better than what was going on in his head.

“No…” Pella gave Guert’s hand a squeeze. “But he’ll wake up soon. No reason he shouldn’t, right?”

Owen could think of a few, and his biology scores were always pretty dismal. “No, no reason,” he said.

Guert woke up on the third day, doubtless because he knew a good religious metaphor when he saw one. Owen was alone in the room, leafing back through _Moby-Dick_ in an attempt to figure out when a particular destination had last been mentioned, when he saw Guert’s eyes open. 

“Guert?” He didn’t even have this much adrenaline on the baseball field with balls being hurled at his head at a hundred miles an hour. Where was Pella? Getting coffee, going to the bathroom. 

Guert’s lips moved. He blinked and swallowed. “Hey O.” Barely a whisper, but it didn’t need to be much. He was awake and talking and remembered who Owen was, which was several steps in advance of what Owen had expected. 

“Hi…” He should have been saying so many things, explaining, getting a doctor, calling Pella. Instead he crouched down by the bed, Guert’s fingers for once tight around his. “At the risk of stating the obvious, Guert, you’re in the hospital. You had a heart attack. You’re going to be okay. Pella’s… I just need to text Pella.”

He slipped the phone out of his pocket and almost dropped it, his eyes suddenly wet with tears. 

“Did you win?”

Owen pressed letters with his fingertip. “What?”

Now Guert was looking at him as if he were the one with possible mental trauma. “The championship.”

“Oh.” Message sent. “Yes. Henry seems to have been a convert to the experimental use of the cranium in preference to the bat, but we won.”

Guert’s smile was to die for. “I hear that’s going around.”

“How do you feel? Are you okay?”

“Mm, I’d rather not think about it.”

He really should get a doctor. Maybe as soon as Pella showed up. “Guert… everyone knows.”

Guert closed his eyes for a fraction more than a blink, opened them again. “It’ll be okay,” he said. And then Pella was there.

***

“You simply have to tell me about your name.” The question had been raised in his mind before, but he’d been so smitten with the very _idea_ of calling another human being Guert that he’d never quite got around to asking.

Guert’s smile almost broke through the fatigue in his eyes. “Which part?”

“Oh please. Like they’re actually divisible.”

It was August, and though the climate outside could be unbearably hot at times, their daily walk by the lake had been cooled by a pleasant breeze coming off the water. Physically Guert had been improving day by day, able to walk for longer and a little less frustrated by his limitations in comparison to his prior athleticism. And, as long as Owen questioned him about something appropriately academic, he was attentive and articulate as well. For long stretches, though, Guert would simply gaze out at the lake, lost in thought.

Now that they were home, stretched out on Guert’s bed in what had once been the Bremens’ house, it seemed a little easier to reach him.

“You might be disappointed. My family name’s a bit of a mystery, even to my own family. Even to me, and I’ve been known to dabble in onomastics. The accepted theory combines accidental misspellings on immigrating to the US with various creative adaptations. In any case, I quite like it. Once I got past all the inevitable high school nicknames it’s been useful for publications.” Guert adopted a mock-stern, deliberately academic tone. “What about you, Mr. Dunne? Is your father Irish by any chance?”

Owen hated the way he reflexively looked down and away more than the question. Guert needed easy conversation now, not family drama. “Irish-American, yes. Second generation.” He gave Guert’s hand a squeeze: _I’m here, I’m still with you_. “What about Guert?”

Guert shrugged against the pillows. “I’m the fourth of four brothers. I think it’s quite apparent my parents ran out of normal, boring names that were unlikely to be misspelled and mispronounced by every teacher I ever had.”

“Do I have to remind you that you named your daughter after an ancient Greek city?”

“Well naturally,” Guert said. “Calling her Jane Affenlight just wouldn’t do. Forget about the dissonance, what if she ran off and married a Dunne?”

Owen scratched his cheekbone. “Or a Schwartz. If only that thing with Henry had worked out.”

Guert blinked. “There was a thing with Henry?”

“You really haven’t realized how essentially incestuous this campus is, have you?” Owen rolled over onto his side, hand drifting down over Guert’s Westish-approved _Moby-Dick_ t-shirt, now damp with sweat, to the crotch of his sweatpants. He could almost feel Guert tensing up before it actually happened, a memory of what had happened the last time he’d tried this, and the time before that.

“O…”

Owen kissed his ear. “You need to let yourself feel good, Guert. The longer you wait the harder it’ll be.”

Guert closed his eyes, biting his lips closed, swallowing. Every time they’d ever taken a new step in their relationship – the first time they’d had sex, their first night sleeping in the same bed – Guert had been nervous, and understandably so. But he’d also been clearly, undeniably excited even if he’d needed a few beers and a cigarette to calm down. Now there were no beers or cigarettes and likely never would be again, and all the emotion radiating from his body was fear, pure and simple.

They had been sleeping in the same bed for six weeks, ever since Guert moved out of his college rooms. He’d mournfully told Owen that he would be absolutely no fun, and he’d kept to his word. It had been nice at first to just hold him, to feel him breathing, his heart beating. It had been nice not to have to keep an ear out for Pella, who was either definitely not there or banging around upstairs as if to make damn sure they knew she _was_ there and therefore not to try any funny business. It had been especially nice not to have to sneak out afterward like he didn’t belong.

Guert, though, remained as distant as he possibly could be with Owen’s arms around him. He showered and shaved and took his pills and ate the meals they put in front him. But he often simply wasn’t there, blankly staring into space. Owen thought of Henry depressed and starving himself, of Mike dependent on painkillers, of all the people Guert had barely pulled back from the brink lately. 

He truly didn’t want to ask. “Is it… Guert, if you’re not interested in me anymore…?” If Guert had spent sixty years exclusively attracted to women, surely the past few months could’ve been an aberration.

But Guert opened his eyes with a wounded look. “You know it’s not like that at all. Of course I want you. Anyone would.”

“So let me.”

Guert stroked the back of his finger down Owen’s cheek. For once, although his gray eyes radiated anxiety, he was nevertheless present in the moment. “Kiss me?” he asked, and Owen was certain that in some ways it was a genuine question.

Owen kissed him as tenderly as he could, as if his own jaw were still smashed and swollen, as if Guert could be broken with a touch. The first time they’d kissed, really kissed, had been a challenge laid down – _I’m here, I’m real, what are you going to do about it?_ Now his intentions were far more benign, but Guert’s fear and indecision were possibly even more palpable.

At least he was responding as Owen slid his fingers into Guert’s thick silver-streaked hair, his mouth opening to let Owen deeper, his breaths shorter as future worries at least momentarily took a backseat to current desire.

“Okay,” Guert said finally, the word stuttering out between kisses. “Okay. Let’s… let’s try.”

Guert was hard when Owen let his hand drift down once more to Guert’s crotch, shifting his hips up to rub against Owen’s palm. 

“If it hurts, I’ll stop,” Owen said, and wished he hadn’t when he saw the flash of concern pass over Guert’s face. “I know it’ll be fine, Guert. The doctors said…”

“I know.” The words said _but I don’t believe in anything but pain_ just as much as they said _please stop talking_.

Owen softly kissed him one more time, and moved to pull down the sweatpants, finally settling between Guert’s legs on the bed as he stroked Guert’s penis. Telling Guert to relax now could only have the opposite effect. The only thing to do was to do it, and hope that nothing bad happened – like Pella, who was supposedly at the college kitchens, bursting in – otherwise he would likely have to remain celibate for the entirety of his adult life.

He never hurried things along with Guert. Jason had been another temperament entirely, and only a year or so older than Owen himself. Guert was never likely to come quickly, and the very first time Owen had sucked him off, when his jaw finally let him do it, Owen had really taken his time. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his jaw, for one thing, but he also hadn’t wanted Guert to just squeeze his eyes closed and get off without processing that, yes, this was a man who was blowing him. Poor Guert had looked so sick and distraught after blowing Owen the first time that it had made him wonder.

Owen took him in his mouth, and after a minute Guert’s breathing calmed and his body relaxed, if only a little, his hand drifting down to caress Owen’s head. Owen glanced up, but Guert’s eyes were only half open, his chest rising and falling in a way that might approximate calmness. The only thing to do was to stay the course and, once things got suitably intense, to make sure they were more than good enough to keep Guert’s mind off anything his body might be doing other than coming.

Guert’s breaths turned into low moans soon enough, his hips rocking gently. “Don’t stop,” he murmured, and Owen didn’t.

Owen held him afterward, which always felt good even before Guert’s unscheduled visit to the emergency room. Guert might not have all the muscle of his footballing days anymore, but he was still a big guy, still tall and broad-shouldered and undeniably masculine. And he might not be president of the college anymore, but there was still something faintly erotic about having a one-time academic superstar nestled against him, cheek pressed to his chest. Not that those were the _reasons_ why Owen enjoyed feeling him there, but they did contribute something.

After they had got him home from the hospital, back to his college rooms at first, Owen had begged Pella to leave them alone for an evening. He’d taken a TV from the janitors and borrowed _Groundhog Day_ from a friend in the drama department. It had raised barely a smile from Guert, who was still horribly distant, but he’d laid down on the couch, his head in Owen’s lap, and watched until he fell asleep, Owen stroking his hair.

Even though Guert had made him very aware that he was dating a man in his sixties, Owen had never considered becoming a nursemaid. At least not this soon. Guert was sixty-one in years only, looked maybe forty, and was certainly no slouch in bed. In retrospect he should’ve thought to see the cigarettes and the scotch and even the fish fry through the lens of an older body. He should’ve never suggested smoking, should’ve convinced Guert to turn vegetarian instead. Guert was such a sweetheart that it might even have worked.

After the first few days, Guert didn’t really _need_ a nursemaid, at least not physically. He could walk and eat and shower. The problem was more that he was so preoccupied, so inwardly reflective, that he would forget to do these things if they left him alone.

Now, though, Guert was more present than he had been in weeks.

“I’m an idiot,” Guert said, untying the knot of Owen’s yoga pants with one hand. “That was amazing. _You’re_ amazing.”

“It’s good that we took things slowly,” Owen said, not even really convincing himself. “You were hurt.”

Guert rolled his palm over the bulge of Owen’s penis. “Shh.”

Owen was left to lie back and reflect on just how much better at this Guert had gotten since their first time in his office.

***

The following June, Owen woke up to the vague memory of having already woken up several times that same morning, and with the even vaguer suggestion that he was forgetting something important. Clearly at least one significant item was missing from the room, as the bed was empty but for his own body and a few smushed pillows, and as he was naked rather than in his favorite yin-yang pajamas, Guert had to have been there.

He reached for his glasses and sat up, gathering his thoughts. He was back in the USA, back in Westish for the first time in a year. A glance at the clock by the bed told him it was a little past ten, but even that assurance seemed uncertain. Jet lag. Time zones. Ten in the morning, certainly, judging from the sunlight outside. But _which_ morning? This house, this bedroom, had been so new to him the last time he was here, and after a year in a Tokyo dormitory it seemed stranger still. Although Guert (and occasionally Pella) had now been living here for twelve months or so, to Owen it was still very much another intermediate residence and not quite home. Not yet, anyway.

“Guert?” 

The last time he was here, Guert had been quite the work in progress too: recovering from a heart attack (which could have easily killed him) as well as from his expulsion from his own little Eden of the college presidency (likewise). Owen had left for Japan knowing that Pella would be living here, and therefore Mike would never be far away. Ergo, everything would be fine.

When they’d seen each other in Tokyo over Christmas, everything really had seemed fine. Yes Guert got tired more easily than Owen. Of course he did. But he’d seemed healthy enough, and happy, which was perhaps more of a worry that couldn’t easily be solved by running the bleachers or eating vast quantities of kale. And yesterday… Yesterday Owen had come home and they’d kissed and talked and made love, and everything had finally seemed to be better than it ever had been, even before the hospital.

But now…

Owen pulled his pajama bottoms out of the drawer and blearily went to try and find him. Would he really have just gone out without leaving a note? Did Owen even have his cellphone number? He checked next to the landline – Pella’s number was there, of course, but he couldn’t wake her up just to confess that he’d misplaced her father already. Obviously Guert was fine. He ate well, took his pills, went running. Pella had made sure of it, and now Owen was going to make sure of it, even though the two of them combined were still a good fifteen years younger than Guert. What a thought.

Owen sat down on the couch and picked up whatever Guert had been reading from the coffee table. Hollinghurst. Well. He'd drag Guert into the 21st century sooner or later. 

Much as he would’ve liked to distract himself from panicking, some tiny, insistent part of his mind was still telling him that he was missing something. Well, clearly: a big, outlandishly handsome Wisconsin farmboy who for thirty or so years had been masquerading as a somewhat befuddled English professor.

Often at this time, or really a little earlier, Owen would settle into bed in Tokyo after his studies and pick up the phone to call Guert, who would normally just be waking up. International phone calls were never cheap, but his scholarship money had to be spent on _something_ , and he had already acquired far too many books to ship back from Japan.

Guert would be adorably incoherent most of the time, but the moment Owen asked him an actual academic question it was as if that information came from a very different part of his brain, the part unconcerned with sleep or the dog whining at his door.

 _Oh_.

Owen set down the book, took off his glasses, and swung his legs up on the couch. He had just about dozed off again when the door was unlocked and Contango ambled in, making a beeline for food and water in the kitchen. Behind him was Guert Affenlight, carrying a newspaper and a grocery bag, and looking about ten years younger than he had the previous summer. Given that Guert usually looked a good fifteen to twenty years younger than his actual age, clearly the always-present question of their age difference was rapidly becoming irrelevant.

“Good morning!” Guert seemed unreasonably wide awake, given the hour. Presumably this was what happened to people after a year without any decent caffeine. “I thought you’d be out cold for hours yet.”

Owen rolled over onto one side to watch him put away the groceries in the kitchen. “I missed you.”

“Sorry. Had to take Contango out, and I thought you might need milk for cereal. If you still eat cereal?”

“I could eat some cereal.”

“Okay.”

Domesticity. Owen felt he could just lie there and let it envelop him – this wonderful old house, the dog, the almost constant sense that friends might drop in at any moment, and of course Guert. Guert, who knelt down beside the couch and softly kissed him good morning. “You should go back to bed, sweetheart.”

“You should come with me.”

Guert smiled. “I have some work to do. A former grad student of mine just got thrust headfirst into teaching a Hawthorne seminar at Georgetown and now she’s having a panic attack. I said I’d give her some pointers.”

“Ex-girlfriend?” Owen asked.

“Of course not. I never sleep with my students. Other people’s students are another matter. You go back to bed. I’ll come get you in an hour or two. We’ll have some brunch and you can read Pella’s little instruction manual on the proper care and maintenance of your own personal Affenlight.”

Owen let Guert pull him up to his feet. “Pella left me notes?”

“What can I say, O? We’re a literary family.”

***

“You’re not paying rent.”

Guert was usually a diplomatic sort of soul, flexible and willing even if not always eager to see alternative points of view. On this issue, though, he was more interested in poking diligently at his salad, as if he could somehow derive nutrition from it by pushing cucumber chunks around on his plate.

Owen was actually eating his, an eye on the list of drugs and “streng verboten” activities Pella had so thoughtfully left for his edification. “You really expect me to live here for a year without paying anything? Guert, you don’t even have a job.”

“I have a house, and I strongly doubt your mother will be willing to fund a year of us living together.”

“Genevieve has nothing to do with it. I have some money from tutoring in Japan, and more if I teach the playwriting course this summer. We’re supposed to be partners. I’m not a child or a housecat.”

“You’re not paying rent,” Guert repeated. “But you can contribute to groceries, if you’re so eager. And I might need your help in the yard on occasion… okay, and see, now it sounds like you’re my lodger.”

Owen smiled and put down his fork, edging over so he was sitting on Guert’s lap. “It’s so kind of you to lodge me in your own bed.”

“ _Our_ bed,” Guert corrected, leaning his forehead against Owen’s. “And,” he added, after a kiss, “you’re free to add a little style to this place if you want. I finally have a home like a real adult and it just looks like a bigger dorm room. And not your dorm room, either.”

It had taken Owen three years to really get the room together the way he liked it, and then of course he’d had to leave. “I need to pick up the rest of my things from the college. Henry’s almost moved out. I’m not optimistic he remembered to water my herbs.”

“We can get you new herbs. I’ve got a whole garden outside.”

The potential was thrilling, even if it was potential laden with the prospect of actually digging up plots of land and carrying around bags of manure. Maybe he could convince Mike to make the football team do it as part of their training next semester. “Perfect,” he murmured, stroking Guert’s hair. “What about upstairs?”

“Pella’s domain. No boys allowed.”

It was nice just to hear Guert’s voice without the technological interference of a phone call, to feel Guert’s breath on his skin, lips kissing away old hurts from his jaw. “Biological hazard, I assume.”

“Naturally.” Guert smelled of apples, the heel of Owen’s hand rubbing at the crotch of his jeans. “O? How bad is it, really, that I just want to spend the whole week in bed with you? I know we need to have a real relationship: dates, talking, holding hands. But…”

“Shh.” Owen untucked his shirt and blindly worked on each one of the buttons as they kissed. Every time he pushed Guert’s shirt open he half-expected to find scars, some evidence of his time in the hospital last summer, but instead there was only smooth tan skin that belied Guert’s Dutch-German ancestry, and the black lines of the sperm whale on his upper arm.

Last April, when they’d still been meeting covertly in the presidential office, Owen had arrived one afternoon, locked the door, lightly kissed Guert on the lips, and announced in a confidential whisper: “I think I can open my mouth properly today.”

He’d expected a smile at least, and preferably some more kissing and undressing, but Guert had pulled away, more puzzled than any man with his intelligence ever had a right to be. It had been understandable that getting down on his knees and blowing Owen the first time had taken something out of him, even if he’d warmed to it after that, but _receiving_ a blow job? Owen would have wagered that quite a few avowedly straight men on campus would be only too happy to accept.

“But…” Guert had faltered. “But why would you want me?”

Owen had looked at him, confused. “Why _wouldn’t_ I want you?”

Now, after so many nights together and after last night’s affectionate re-learning of each other’s bodies under the covers, there were very few doubts between them. Guert pulled his own belt loose as Owen glanced out the back window, wondering if any neighbors could see in, or if anyone ever rowed by on the lake. He really had to enlighten Guert to the benefits of drawstring yoga pants… but not such that he stopped wearing those jeans that were tight in all the right places, or the beautifully tailored Italian suits. Mm.

Guert was thick and hot in his hand, Guert’s hands resting on his hips, pulling him in closer as they kissed and kissed again. Even though Guert had doubtless been with far more lovers than Owen ever had, he always seemed to look to Owen to take the initiative where making love was concerned, as though there were some deep, unspoken code of conduct for gay sex that was only ever imparted to those who had been sworn members of the cabal from an early age.

“Just touch me,” Owen said, but any more words or thoughts cut off by the sound of the front door, a bark from Contango, and-

“Dad? Owen?”

“Shit,” Guert said with some hastily bottled-up feeling.

Owen kissed him, tucking him back into his shorts. If they clearly had no time to look as though they were innocently eating lunch, at least they could avoid indecent exposure. 

“Oh, hi.” Pella appeared at the kitchen door, awkward indecision in her face as Owen moved back into his own chair. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Guert didn’t flush easily, which was helpful as he re-buttoned his fly under the table.

“I could come back… Except I already cycled all the way over here. Um.” She leaned against the doorframe.

Guert smoothed down his already-perfect hair as Owen speared half a cherry tomato with his fork and considered the available options for excusing himself from family conversations. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She frowned. “Yeah. Um. Could we talk upstairs or somewhere? Once you’ve put your clothes back on, preferably.”

Owen pushed his chair back. “You can talk right here. Fortuitously I was just about to take a shower.”

Pella gave him a grateful smile. “Oh. Good. Sorry Owen. Just… need a word alone with my dad.”

“No problem.” Owen put his dishes in the sink, affectionately tousled Guert’s hair, and left.

The shower was hot and good and about three times as long as it really needed to be, because walking straight back into an Affenlight family discussion could dispense far more hazards than Owen ever cared to navigate. Even if he and Pella quite liked each other as people, Pella was still a long way off being comfortable with him as her father’s live-in boyfriend, and Owen was possibly never going to be comfortable being placed in the role of stepfather to a woman three years older than him.

“Owen?” Guert rapped on the glass. “Everything all right?”

“Fine.” Owen said, and switched the water off. “What’s the report from the front line?”

A pause as he opened the shower door, and then Owen had lovely, dry Affenlight arms around him. “Pella’s gone. Everything’s okay, just… father-daughter stuff. Honestly, after four years of no contact I quite enjoy the crises.”

 _Was it about me?_ Owen wanted to ask, but the likelihood was that it wasn’t, and if it was, would he really grab his things and leave? Instead he leaned into Guert’s embrace, his body soaking Guert’s shirt. “Maybe tonight we really should go to bed and stay there. There must be somewhere that delivers pizza around here.”

“You don’t eat flour,” Guert reminded him.

“I don’t eat _much_ flour.” He wanted some pot, too, but he doubted anyone would deliver that to their door. “So, Chinese then.”

Guert considered it. “That sounds appropriately unhealthy,” he said. “I’m in.”

***

The college was quieter in June, with most students returning home for the summer, but brighter too – a world of flowers coming into bloom. Once, Owen had daydreamed that they might lie here on the gentle rise of grass by the lake, bathed in summer sunlight, and share a cigarette. Now there was no cigarette, but Guert reached out and held his hand, and that seemed better than the fantasy had ever been.

“So Pella’s really okay?”

Guert took the time to consider before answering. “Yes? Yes. She is. She’s doing well in school. She’s actually _in_ school, which is quite impressive regardless of her grades. Things seem to be stable with Mike. We’re talking. I think she’s okay.”

“But this morning?” Owen prompted.

“Mm.” Guert drew his feet in closer. “Her ex is giving her some trouble. Of course she can’t tell Mike, because Mike would actually do something. So I’m the diplomatic option. Also, unlike you youngsters, I actually have a lawyer.”

“Oh.” Now he felt foolish for prying.

Guert turned his head and smiled. “Didn’t think you’d be with someone with kids, did you?”

“No… Well, not for a few years anyway, when all the guys my age who got married finally come out of the closet. And the kids would still be a lot smaller than Pella.”

“At least you don’t need to change diapers.” Guert breathed in deeply, let it out. “I feel bad for your mother. I know precisely what it was like for my only child to run off with an older man.”

Owen closed his eyes. “I didn’t run anywhere. I’ve been to Tokyo, I graduated at the top of my class, I’ve had plays produced, I somehow even won a baseball championship… You’re hardly an evil influence, Guert, and I strongly doubt Genevieve has been relying on me to produce any grandchildren.”

“All excellent and reasonable points. Unfortunately reason doesn’t come into it when it’s your child. No matter how big they get and how much they achieve, they’re still the little girl or boy they once were, needing you to stop them from falling off their bikes and skinning their knees.”

“So what would you suggest I do, if we intend to preserve serenity in the familial unit?”

Guert rolled over onto his side, picking grass from Owen’s aikido t-shirt. “Beats me. I suspect outlasting Pella and David’s relationship would be a start. Maybe we can offer her a part-share in Pella if she’s after grandkids.”

Owen raised his eyebrows. “You realize if Pella and Mike ever procreate, I’m looking at being a surrogate grandfather before I’m thirty?”

“I fully expect you to do so much before you’re thirty that there’s barely anything else to do afterward. Except make love and lecture me about environmental initiatives.”

“Two things of which I will never tire…” Owen said, just as a football smacked into the grass by his head. He opened his eyes, blinking into the sun. “Apparently it’s true. I _do_ attract balls to the face.”

“Sorry to interrupt, lovebirds.” Mike Schwartz loomed over them, blocking the sun as he retrieved his ball. “I’ve been around the whole campus and I haven’t found a single guy who looks like he might have half a throwing arm on him. Henry’s off with his girlfriend somewhere and these summer students are all saplings. Skinnier than you, Buddha.”

Owen glanced at Guert, who seemed to have replaced last summer’s emotional distance with a perpetual sense of amusement at the happenings on his campus. “And you somehow thought we, of all people, might be able to help.”

Mike twirled the ball on a finger, caught it again. “You should be good for some Hail Marys, Affy. Weren’t you starting quarterback once?”

 _Affy_? Owen shaded his eyes from the sun and sat up.

“Don’t believe everything Pella tells you. I was possibly the worst quarterback Westish ever had, and that was forty years ago when we dressed like clowns and were named after a tree. I doubt I’ve got much of an arm now, let alone the knees.”

Mike did not look at all convinced. “You’re not in bad shape.”

“Oh I’m in great shape. It’s just my heart that doesn’t work.”

“Boo hoo. You should see my x-rays. See Buddha’s, even. How’s the cheek, Buddha?”

Owen gave the OK sign. Guert ran his fingers through sweat-dampened hair. “Fine. At least there’s only two of you here to see me embarrass myself.”

“I could call more,” Owen suggested.

Over on the college’s sports fields, they had almost the entire athletic complex to themselves, but for a few runners practicing starts on the track several hundred meters away. Owen sat down on the bottom bleacher, took his notebook from his back pocket, stole Guert’s pen, and started outlining new scenes for his latest play. There was no time like the present, and he certainly wasn’t going to be much use playing football.

Guert missed the first ball – too slow, too low – but once he’d jogged over and retrieved it he threw it back in what Owen judged to be a fairly decent fashion, seeing as Mike managed to catch it without too much trouble.

“You’re supposed to run,” Guert pointed out.

“You’re supposed to throw it harder.”

Owen’s notes had turned into doodles, watching the two of them. Even if he had very little inclination to play or even watch the NFL, a game that was absolutely unforgiving to someone as light and skinny as him, the pictures of Guert in his tight pants and shoulder pads from the late 60s had piqued his interest a little.

Maybe Mike made it easy on him, but Guert caught the second ball tight to his chest even if it did mean overreaching and crashing into the turf on the way down. At least his muscle memory of how to take a fall seemed to be intact. 

“You’re right,” Guert called, brushing grass from his shoulder. “This is _outstanding_ fun.”

“Screw you,” Mike said, grinning broadly. “You think your boyfriend can throw better?”

Guert grinned just as wide. “He can definitely screw me better.”

Owen put down his pen altogether. 

For the past year he’d kept in touch with Guert’s activities by phone and email, and through the occasional chat with Pella whenever she happened to pick up the phone. Every week things got better and all of their fears receded. Being gifted Contango along with the house (or, as Contango doubtless saw it, being permitted to live in what was indisputably Contango’s house) had been a serendipitous development. Pella could drag Guert to the pool, and Mike could help him lift timber to construct his writing shed out back, but Contango was the only one interested in taking him running.

Owen had kept in shape himself in Japan, continuing his yoga classes and signing up for aikido, which gave him a bit more of a workout – he’d found himself missing the adrenaline of the baseball field, and even Coach Cox’s laborious warm-up runs around the lighthouse. And, he had to admit, Guert’s heart attack had been a wake-up call for him too. Even if he was twenty-two now, he wouldn’t always be.

It was so good to simply lean back in the sunshine and watch Guert run and sweat and curse more than he probably had in the entire last year. His hair was getting too long, Owen noted, at least in cases where _too long_ meant _not entirely presidential_. But Guert wasn’t president anymore, didn’t need to wear a suit, and wouldn’t need to answer to anyone’s standards (other than Pella’s, obviously) for the foreseeable future. The question of how, exactly, they were both going to survive on savings and odd teaching assignments perhaps should have been a troubling one, but Owen had flipped through the opening chapter of Guert’s novel before lunch and it looked almost surprisingly good.

And if Guert failed as a writer, at least he always had his good looks, genius intellect, and peerless public speaking skills to fall back on. 

“Okay, one more,” Mike shouted. He probably wasn’t tired, but his knees were doubtless shredded and aching even from this exertion. 

The throw was hard, fast, and pinpointed perfectly – a bit of a fluke for a random practice throw, but someone must have been saying his prayers. Guert, Owen was pleased to see, caught it, but caught it hard and dropped down onto the turf with a groan. 

The expected curse and grin never came. 

“Guert?” Owen pushed his notebook aside and ran, the sudden charged anxiety of adrenaline flooding through him, his hand already on the cellphone in his pocket. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mike heading toward them too.

Guert was motionless on his back in the grass, the football hugged to his chest, his eyes open. Was he breathing? Last summer Owen had spent hours reading everything he could on heart conditions and emergency medicine, had even let Pella take him to a first aid course while Guert and Mike watched old NFL games with probably too much beer. But now his mind was filled with sheer panic.

“Guert?” Owen dropped down beside him, pushing the ball away. “Please don’t die.”

For a second, Guert looked right at him before rolling away, coughing into the dirt. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he gasped with some conviction just as Mike jogged up. 

Owen laid a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

“He’s fine,” Mike said, scooping up the ball. “Knocked the wind out of him, that’s all.”

“Knocked a couple of years off my life, you mean.” Guert picked himself up and tugged Owen into a rough hug. “Sorry for scaring you, kiddo.”

Owen badly wanted to laugh and joke, but breathing was suddenly hard and he was concerned he might start sobbing. So he buried his face in the crook of Guert’s neck and held on tight. Guert kissed his hair, hand rubbing his back in wide circles.

“Well.” Mike cleared his throat. “I’m kind of beat. How about we head over to Café Oo? I swear it gets more hipsterish every year, but they’ve got these ice shakes that aren’t bad.”

“An ice _bath_ is what I need.”

Owen pulled away, straightening his glasses, doing what he thought was an excellent impression of his usual serene self. “I’ll give you a massage later. We should go have tea.”

***

Long ago he’d fleetingly imagined being able to sit with Guert in the campus café and simply sip espressos and flirt uproariously, with no one caring at all – or, at least, with Guert not caring at all. Perhaps, in a strange way, still being here at Westish and being a very public couple actually diminished Guert’s offence in the eyes of the faculty. This was no passing fling, no cruel manipulation of an innocent student, but love in all its simplicity and diversity.

“Hey President Affenlight.” A girl in a Westish-branded sweatshirt raised a hand in greeting as she walked past. She wasn’t the only one. Even if Westish’s new president was amply qualified and more than capable in the position, she wasn’t quite Guert, with all his pure charisma, historic ties, and sheer passion for this place. No one gave convocation addresses quite like Guert. 

Owen had missed his commencement ceremony due to being in Japan. He still needed to pick up his diploma. Once he’d thought about attending alongside Henry, sitting and listening to Guert’s inevitable string of college in-jokes tied up with his deep convictions about education, learning, and making a difference in the world. But this, sitting here by the window in a half-filled café, watching Guert pick dirt out from under his once-perfect fingernails while Mike talked about football tryouts… This wasn’t commencement, a pep talk of memories to send him on his way. This was _home_.

Guert squeezed his hand on the table when Mike went for another slushie. “You’re a little quiet, O.”

“I’m okay.” He smiled. Usually it was Guert who sat giving unconvincing assurances. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Owen reached for the pot of tea and topped up his cup. “What do you think my chances would be of getting a job here?”

“A job? You mean in the drama department?”

“Full time.”

Guert frowned. “Not to disparage your qualifications, but it would rather depend on how desperate they are. Summer school is one thing. You certainly know more than a freshperson and rumor has it you’re a pretty decent teacher, but you still only have a BA. Now if you were to enroll in…” He broke off, already shaking his head. “No, you’re not doing this.”

Owen held his hands up, innocent. “I’m only asking a question.”

“You’re going to Harvard, O.”

“Precisely how many playwrights went to Harvard? It’s not even something I _need_ an education for. I just need to write, and maybe have some connections.”

Guert massaged his temples. “ _Maybe_? Owen, I could see your point if you were moving to New York or Chicago, but just how many playwrights come out of the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin? Even Milwaukee barely has any theater worth going to.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Go to Harvard and you not only get a world-class education, you meet a lot of very influential people. You can do anything you want in life. I’m not letting you turn that down just to hang out with a crazy old professor and his dog. You’re too good, O. I want you out there winning awards and maybe thanking me in a few speeches. Henry’s going to make millions in baseball – you think he should stick around here and coach Division III college ball?”

Owen shrugged and sipped his tea. “I seem to recall there was once a young man who went to Harvard, made it onto the bestseller lists and debated people on CNN. And he still decided he liked Westish better. I can’t think of his name, but they called him the Heartthrob of the Humanities?”

Mike had clearly been waylaid by whatever excuse he could find not to walk back into this discussion. Guert pushed strands of hair back out of his eyes. “Fine, but at least I got my PhD. I saw the world. I had a daughter. Coming back here at fifty-two is a lot different to deciding never to leave at twenty-two.”

“Who said anything about never?” Owen pulled his chair closer. “You’re going to be here for three more years until Pella graduates. I understand that. So I’ll enroll in an MA program, I’ll do some teaching and I’ll write, and in three years we can _both_ go to Harvard, or New York, or wherever we want. As you so astutely mentioned, Wisconsin isn’t the best place to be in the theater, or to be gay, if I’m being honest, much as I appreciate your efforts.”

Guert looked as pained as if someone had hit him in the gut again. Owen couldn’t be sure that Guert had even been listening to half of what he’d just said. “In three years I’ll be sixty-five.”

“Yes?”

“This is never going to be a long-term relationship, O, no matter how much I want it to be.”

“It already _is_ a long-term relationship.” Owen wished he had the depth of knowledge about Melville to pluck an appropriate, entirely convincing quote from the air. “I love you, Guert, and I’m not planning a future without you in it.” He sighed. “I apologize, of course, for the unforgivable sentimentality, but after your insistence on living as if you were immortal, you’ve started living like you might drop dead tomorrow.”

“I might.”

“So might I, so might we all. If we start thinking that way we’re both going to be alone. Besides, I’m not talking about making any firm plans yet. I’m teaching this summer, and I’ll ask around about a full-time position. We’ll see what happens.”

Guert looked like he was thinking very hard about not beating up the nearest freshperson and stealing their cigarettes. “Owen… When exactly did you decide that this was going to be more than just a couple of months of easy sex? When I was in the hospital?”

“When you took me out on a date just because I asked you, even though it could get you fired. When you asked me to sleep over and made me breakfast the next morning. When I called you up and you used the word ‘amazing’ three times in under a minute. This isn’t about you almost dying, Guert. It’s how incredible you can be when you’re alive.”

Guert met his eyes, seeming utterly lost, no words coming to his lips. 

“Kiss me?” Owen said.

He expected Guert to glance around anxiously and point out that they were in a public place, and that even if everyone knew they were together, flaunting it was quite another matter. But Guert’s gaze didn’t falter even as he touched his thumb lightly to Owen’s cheek, leaned in, and kissed him.

Owen had no idea if anyone even noticed. His eyes were closed.

***

As the days passed, and with them the height of summer, life began simply to be lived and the Bremens’ place became home. Even if they barely ever went upstairs to check on Pella’s rooms (Contango sometimes had to be retrieved from the warm spot by the water heater), the two of them together were shaping the place into something more than a storage depot for Guert’s books.

Owen dealt with the smaller things – color choices, artwork, furniture – while Guert proved to be unexpectedly good at the construction side. He’d be out in the backyard all day, listening to opera or audiobooks while he worked on his shed, knocked together yet more bookcases for Owen’s growing collection, and dug up the soil. He was going to grow pumpkins, apparently, and Owen had no particular reason to object.

The drama department had barely hidden their glee at Owen’s tentative suggestion of continuing to teach after the summer. It was only two classes – a few group tutorials a week, papers to grade – but it was money and it was experience. It was also the perfect excuse to have some free yet enthusiastic freshperson actors workshop his new play.

Guert was writing too – having Owen around to cajole him and to offer feedback, however critical, on each page seemed to help. Sometimes he would come to the campus library for research or inspiration. He’d meet Owen between classes and they’d drink tea at Café Oo and not smoke cigarettes. They were very far from being campus celebrities – most students were barely aware that the faculty, past or present, even had private lives – but they usually had company in the form of Owen’s makeshift acting troupe, and the occasional Melville-fascinated lit student desperate to pick Guert's brain.

Every night Henry’s games were on TV, Mike and Pella would come over (unless Mike was at a game himself) and they’d eat pizza and drink beer and shout advice at the television, which mostly involved getting Henry the hell off the bench. If Pella hadn’t exactly come to embrace the idea of her father having a much younger boyfriend (Owen still wasn’t sure if it was the “much younger” or “boyfriend” part that was the main sticking point), she’d at least accepted that Owen wasn’t about to break Guert’s heart if he could help it.

“Honestly, sometimes I think you’re the more mature one,” she said to Owen in the kitchen, poking at the ice tray as if more cubes would somehow appear. “It’s not like I grew up thinking my mom was his one true love. I was just expecting someone more…” She gestured.

Owen was afraid to complete that sentence with most of the adjectives that came to mind. “Female?” he suggested.

“Maternal, I guess. Not that any of his girlfriends have ever been maternal.”

A delighted shout came from Mike in the living room, answered by some excited barking from Contango, who had recently joined the rest of them in becoming a Cardinals fan. 

Pella looked around for the bottle opener. “I just have to wonder how much of my life’s been a lie. How much _pretending_ he was doing, for my benefit or because he was scared or whatever.”

“I don’t think he was pretending.”

“So he goes through his whole life, sixty years, stripping naked with hot boys in locker rooms and screwing probably more women than live in this whole town, and the only man he’s ever been attracted to is _you_? I mean, no offense.”

Owen shrugged. “Denzel must be absolutely distraught.”

Pella giggled and snapped the top off her Heineken. “He must be.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Owen. You’re great. You’re good for him. It’s just… what makes my dad wake up one day and decide he really wants to suck cock?”

“I don’t think we really want to have that discussion,” Owen said diplomatically, and stuck out a snack bowl. “Pringles?”

The phone rang, and the sound from the TV dipped a little as Guert answered. He’d been getting a lot of calls lately from old colleagues and students he’d known at Harvard, most of them seeking second opinions on manuscripts and theses, with a few invitations to come and speak about his great passions: Melville or Thoreau. Perhaps Pella shouldn’t have been so surprised by her father falling for a man. Owen himself was resigned to always being truly third or fourth in his affections, even if the other competitors were all long dead.

“Owen?” Guert called from the other room. “Telephone!”

“Who is it?” He stuffed a couple of Pringles in his mouth as he went back in. 

“Your mother.”

Mike inhaled sharply and got up. “I’ll be in the restroom, then.”

Owen took the phone. On the TV screen, Henry and his teammates were one point up. Oddly, Owen was seeing a lot more baseball now than he’d ever bothered watching while he was actually playing it. “Genevieve. Are you being nice to my boyfriend?”

He sat down, leaning against Guert as if Genevieve could actually see them being all pleasantly domestic together. Guert snaked a hand around his waist and stole a potato chip.

“You know I’m always nice,” came Genevieve’s entirely professional, polished tones. “How are you? How’s everything?”

“Everything’s fine. I emailed you two days ago. Very little of note has happened since. We’re just watching Henry’s game and Guert’s drinking far too much beer when he should’ve switched to Sprite about three bottles ago.”

“Okay.”

Silence. 

“Genevieve? Is something wrong?”

“No, honey, no. I just… Well, I was thinking... I’d very much appreciate it if you, and Guert of course, would come home for Christmas this year. Just a few days. We’ll have dinner. You can see all your old friends…”

Owen wasn’t quite seeing the angle on this one. “Why?”

“ _Why?_ O, I’ve barely seen you in years. I’m your mom. I can understand that you’re not interested in seeing your father, but we’re family. I just want us to do a nice, normal family thing for once.”

“Oh.” On the positive side, if Owen’s father did break the habit of the past decade and show up at Genevieve’s house, meeting Guert would probably give _him_ a heart attack.

“Guert isn’t Jewish, is he? Or… something else?”

“No, he’s Catholic. Sort of.”

By this point, both Guert and Pella were staring at him in puzzlement.

“Look, Genevieve, why don’t you come here? It’ll do you good to get out of the city, and if you want family we really need Pella to be there too. And Mike. You met him. He’s Pella’s…” Owen glanced at her “…something. We’d love to have you, and at least three of us can cook so all you have to do is eat. Henry might even come too, if he’s not too busy being rich and famous.”

Henry, after all, was practically his brother by this point, Pella and Mike some sort of in-laws. He decided to push his luck. “You don’t even need to book a hotel. We have a spare room. We’re right by the lake in this beautiful big old house…” Admittedly it was going to be freezing come December, but wasn’t that part of the romanticism, to live somewhere they still had snow?

“I’m not sure, O. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You’re my mom. Of course you want to intrude.” For the first time since their angry, tearful confrontation after Guert had landed in the hospital, he found that he genuinely wanted to see her. “Oh, look. Henry’s up to bat. Why don’t you think about it, anyway?”

He hung up a few moments later to find Mike hanging on the open door, Pella and Guert still looking mystified. 

“Christmas,” he said, because of course that explained everything.

“Right.” Mike snatched up the remote. “Now, if we can get back to the _game_ …”

***

Mike and Pella stayed upstairs that night, which was probably for the best given how much alcohol had been consumed, both before and after Henry skidded onto home plate. Guert had obediently switched to Sprite, which likely contained enough sugar for him to be bouncing off the ceiling in any case. Around midnight they made love as quietly as was really reasonable, with far too much semi-drunken laughter muffled by the covers.

“So,” Guert said, stretching. “Your mother.”

“My mother,” Owen echoed. He considered the ceiling. “Pella asked me why you suddenly like cock so much.”

Guert’s laugh was much louder than any of their other activity had been. “What did you say?”

“The phone rang, thus proving god is not, in fact, dead.”

“I see. Well it’s good to know I’ve raised a daughter with boundless curiosity and apparently no sense of social decorum.” Guert nestled into his side, head pressed to his chest. “Can I ask you something?”

Owen stroked his hair. “As the boyfriend of an erstwhile English professor, I feel compelled to point out you already have.”

“You never talk about your father,” Guert said. “And I know if he’s not in your life perhaps he’s not worth talking about, but…”

“What do you want to know?” He didn’t like tensing up, didn’t like being sharp or evasive when it came to Guert, but it was never going to be a comfortable subject.

He could feel Guert looking up at him. “Well. Is he alive?”

“I imagine so.”

“Mm. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

The moment of silence between them stretched out long enough that Owen could have easily pretended to already be asleep, or effortlessly steered the conversation in another direction. But if he was going to invite his mother to Christmas dinner with Guert’s daughter, if they were really going to be a family, he couldn’t skate around Guert’s legitimate interest forever.

“He walked out on us when I was six,” Owen said. “My mom’s always made decent money. We didn’t need him, and we didn’t need alimony. We didn’t need to talk to him at all, ever again. He sends postcards sometimes, but a lot happens between six and twenty-two. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t have any idea who I am or what I do. The most I am to him is a kidney donor. So that’s my father.”

“I’m sorry,” Guert said quietly.

“And don’t get any of that _bullshit_ about daddy issues into your head, either.” Maybe it was the beer talking, not that he’d had too much, but dislodging one weight from his chest was making everything else come loose. “What’s the theory – that I had a piss-poor father so I’m looking for a better one? Or if I had a great dad I’d be looking for someone just like him? You’re nothing like him, Guert. Not him, not his diametric opposite, nothing. You might as well be comparing a raven to a writing desk, or custard to a baseball. I love you because of who you are, not because of what he wasn’t. And honestly I’d prefer to be an Affenlight than a Dunne.”

“No you wouldn’t," Guert said. "You’d spend a hundred percent more time just spelling your own name, and a thousand percent more trying to get people to say it correctly. I’ve answered to just about anything since I was four years old.” He lifted his head. “For the record, though, I wasn’t thinking any of that. But now I’m going to have to write a paper on the relative semantics of custard and baseballs just to get it off my mind.”

“And people say we’re not made for each other.”

This neighborhood was much quieter than the campus at night: no foot traffic and very few cars. Even during the day there was a real absence of much activity beyond the Westishers mowing their lawns in the summer months, walking their dogs, and making easy small talk. Owen had worried that Guert was severely underestimating the possible repercussions of living with another man in a small town, even if that small town was infested with liberal arts professors and activist students, but in all honesty their neighbors were far more irritated by Guert’s grand pumpkin schemes and Mike’s often slapdash parking. Perhaps they simply monitored all the comings and goings and assumed Guert was running some sort of boarding house.

The thought of the not-too-distant dorms, of his once much-smaller bed empty of a warm body to cling to, shifted to the memory of another long-ago phone call. “Do you remember the first time you spoke to me?” Owen asked.

“Mm, Freshperson Barbecue, was it? I remember we talked about _The Sperm-Squeezers_ and got a few dirty looks. And you told me all sorts of horrible things about my hotdog.”

“You should know what you’re eating. And, no, I mean before that.”

Guert rubbed his eyes. “Before that? Oh, you mean when I called you about Henry. I can’t say I remember much about it except I was so annoyed by the whole thing. We shouldn’t have been recruiting a shortstop who clearly wasn’t that talented if no one else was interested in him, we certainly shouldn’t have been doing it at the last minute, and we absolutely shouldn’t have been bribing you to be his roommate.”

“I quite enjoyed being bribed.”

“I’m sure you did. Maybe when you and your environmental group came to talk to me I should’ve pointed out that our budget for energy-efficient lighting quite literally went up in your pot smoke just so we could squeeze Henry Skrimshander into your room.”

“Marijuana has numerous potential environmental benefits,” Owen said mildly. “Besides, Henry won us the championship, put Westish on the map…”

“Fractured your cheekbone…”

“Which gave you the opportunity to flirt with me in increasingly awkward ways.”

“And got me fired.”

Owen tousled his hair. “So you’ll never have to make annoying housing calls ever again.”

“Ah, the devious zig-zag world-circle.” Guert raised his hand to look at his watch. “It’s after midnight. We should be asleep. I’ve got to hassle some recalcitrant academics about chapter edits tomorrow, speaking of annoying phone calls, and I’m sure you have some sort of protest to attend or students to torture.”

“I’m sure I do.” Owen rolled over onto his side, bunching up a pillow beneath his head and letting Guert hold him. Just over four years since he was barely out of high school, living in his mother’s house, just lying around waiting for the future to happen… 

“Guert?”

“Mm?”

“Thanks for making the call.”

He could feel Guert smile and kiss his hair. “Thank you for saying yes.”


End file.
